Christmas Cookies!

Here are all the holiday cookies I baked this Christmas. Above we have Ghirardelli Chocolate Crackle Cookies. The recipe is on their box for double chocolate brownie mix.

Lemon ricotta cookies with lemon glaze. Giada Delaurentiis' recipe! She has you spoon the cookie dough onto the baking sheet. If you want perfect circles, it's best to pipe the dough.

Oatmeal cookies with dried cranberries and green raisins... because red and green is Christmas. Recipe is from the Quaker oatmeal box!

Chewy ginger cookies. My friend's gramma's recipe. Here, I tried to get all fancy with the decorating.

Sadly, I did not have time to bake traditional gingerbread cookies. Wish I had :(  But these are quite enough to last me throughout the holidays!

2015 Ornament Swap

Christmas is my favorite favorite holiday. I love having holiday traditions. This year, I rounded up a bunch of friends for my annual handmade ornament swap. The friends who participated were mostly from Alex. I invited everyone over to my place for a Christmas pizza party. This batch is very impressive! Everyone is setting the bar higher each year.

Top row: candy cane, snowflake, and Christmas tree made of cracked marbles
Middle Row: angel, taco, and meowlet kitty
Bottom Row: paper pine cone, stained glass penguin, and Krampus 

 All the ornament swag before we busted them all open. There was such pretty packaging and gift wrapping!

2014 Ornament Swap

My co-workers are so creative! Here are this year's holiday ornament swap ornaments. I saved some room on my tree for these new guys. It's hard to choose which ornaments to put on my tree as my collection is growing bigger each year!

Peppermint Christmas Tree Garland

After I made all my glittery hot air balloon ornaments, I had a LOT of scraps left behind. 
It would've been a waste to just throw them away. So I used a big hole puncher and punched out some circles.

Then, I sewed them together side by side to make a lovely peppermint garland for my tree.

Hot Air Balloon Ornament

I found this tutorial online to make paper hot air balloons. I used glittery paper to give them a holiday sparkle. They were relatively easy to make. The only hard part was cutting out the pieces. The tutorial video shows a fancy paper cutting machine. My paper cutting machine consisted of an X-acto blade and a rather sore index finger.

Snowflake Stamp Gift Wrap

I had received a package the other day. The box was stuffed with kraft paper to protect the contents. Instead of throwing the kraft paper out, I decided to reuse it and make some pretty holiday gift wrap! I bought this snowflake stamp at the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse during my last trip to San Francisco. It's one of my favorite spots to visit if I'm in the Bay Area. 

I also got to find gems like these to decorate my holiday cards:

I learned Christmas seals were bought as an extra charitable stamp for the holidays in order to raise money for tuberculosis and lung disease.

Ornament Swap 2013

This year, I organized an ornament swap amongst some friends. I've swapped with strangers via Swap-Bot before but I found half the ornaments I received turn out to be disappointing. I figured if I hand picked participants, I'd increase the chances of receiving all nice ornaments and a broader variety. Looks like I was right! I received all lovely ornaments in the mail this year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

^_____________^

iPad Yule log.

The office was closed early yesterday around noon for our holiday break. I spent the morning making a fireplace to make an iPad Yule log for a holiday party. Did a Google search on "Christmas fireplace" and this image popped up. I re-sized it to fit my iPad, printed, laminated it onto some chipboard for some structure and taped it onto my iPad. I folded some origami Christmas stockings with guests' names and decorated the mantel. Found a great three hour video of a fireplace on Youtube and voilá! Yule log for an urban apartment that has no chimney.

Christmas Cookie Trio

[Shot by Tony]

In preparation for a little holiday party, I baked cookies for my friends. I made a variety of three kinds: chewy ginger, chocolate crackle and lemon ricotta cookies. I packed them in separate Ziplock bags as I've heard cookies end up tasting the same if you put them all together. Target had super cute holiday treat bags and sticker labels to package the cookies nicely.

Ginabread Cookies.

[Hello gentlemen!]

Ginabread! Er... gingerbread cookies! Icing is hard. Luckily I gots a steady hand. Martha Stewart has a good gingerbread cookie recipe. Here's a helpful tip: Make sure baking time correlates to the size of your cookies (big cookies = bake longer, small cookies = bake shorter).

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies.

[Peanut butter cup cookies via Glorious Treats]

As part of a holiday cookie medley I've been trying to put together, I found this recipe for peanut butter cup cookies. I knew I'd be baking lots of cookies so I tried to find things that were fairly easy and fun to make. I used Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe. 

[Sorry OCD people!]

Chocolate+Caramel+Pecan+Pretzel

[I like this kind of math!]

Isn't this candy tin SO CUTE? JoAnns Fabrics had a 70% off clearance sale on their holiday items. This was the perfect size for chocolate caramel pecan pretzel bites. They are super duper easy to make. Put mini pretzels onto a cookie sheet. Place a caramel Hershey Kiss on top of each and bake for 5 minutes at 250 degrees in the oven. Then smush a pecan on top. Let cool or refrigerate. You got an easy treat in just a few minutes.

Banana Bread.

 [Banana Bread in Holiday Loaf Pan]

I like to handmake my holiday gifts when I can. My favorite banana bread recipe is by Emeril Legasse. A.C. Moore had these cute ceramic holiday loaf pans on sale for a dollar! Three were enough to use up all the batter in the recipe. I reduced the sugar down to 1/2 cup and added chocolate chips to balance the sweetness. I noticed if baked in smaller loaf pans for 40 minutes, the bread comes out lighter and fluffier.

I also bought fat quarter fabrics with holiday prints for a dollar each as well. I hemmed the edges to wrap the banana bread. Makes perfect gift on a budget!

Christmas Stocking.

 

I sewed Christmas stockings for my family. They've never had a real Christmas tree so I bought one this year. Figured I may as well go all out and make them stockings too.

 

Here's a couple I made for myself and my possible future dog, Lucy. I drew a pattern onto an empty cereal box and used cotton flannel. The monogram tiles were bought from Anthropologie and the little dolls were from Crate & Barrel.

origami star ornament.

 

I made another type of ornament! What can I say? Am pretty excited about the holidays! My boss gave away some origami star kits. This was a great way to use them. 

 

I used this entire packet and filled a clear plastic ornament I bought from Michael's for 99 cents. So cheap! 

 

Tie a sparkly ribbon and sprinkle in some powdered glitter. Voilà! Pretty origami star ornaments for holiday wishes!

Sock Snowman Christmas Ornaments.

I'm so very glad to have a personal holiday tradition. For this year's holiday ornament swap, I made little sock snowmen. I keep thinking I'll run out of ideas for baby sock ornaments. I'm glad I haven't run out just yet.

[The gentlemen are ready to party.]

sock polar bear christmas ornaments.

Why, hello there!

I wasn't planning on making another sock related ornament this year. Actually, I was looking forward to doing something different but then I came up with this little dude and it was hard to resist. Sewing them took no time. What took forever was knitting bitty scarves. I used the bits of leftover yarn from other knitting projects.

Jingle bears~ Jingle bears~ Jingle all the way~!

sock cat christmas ornaments.

I was scrambling to get my ornaments done for the 5th Annual Holiday Ornament Swap. I seem to continue with the same theme and make mini sock animals. I wasn't planning on doing so this year and try something different but I ended up making a sock cat:

MEOWY CHRISTMAS~!

sock dove christmas ornaments.

Yesterday, I bought a taller Christmas tree from Target. I needed more branches for the new ornaments I'll be getting from this year's Holiday Ornament Swap hosted by freshly blended.
Last year, I made sock bunny ornaments. This year I'm making sock doves.

Peace, Dove & Happiness!